Two examples of positive outcomes of critical thinking I want to share are from personal experience. One is when a patient I was working with a patient that had a temperature that was increasing and blood pressure was trending down between vital sign assessments. I notified the nurse of what I was seeing and she came in to assess the patient more. Using critical thinking, she was able to take those measurements, the fact that the patient was also sweating and having heart palpitations to conclude this patient was going into sepsis shock. The nurse ordered a sepsis screening and sure enough it was positive so that patient was immediately sent to ICU and put on antibiotics. Another example that I can think of is when a patient just had an amputation and needed to use the bathroom. Although it was potentially possible with the help of multiple people, the decision was made to use a bedpan. This was because based on the nurses ability to think critically and see the situation as a whole, she knew it was safer to not get up until assessment by PT had been completed.
Two examples of negative outcomes where critical thinking did not come into play also come from personal experience. I was working with a nurse who had a patient with a fairly low blood pressure. It was time to give him his scheduled BP medication. Instead of using her critical thinking skills and assessing the patient from all angles, she went a head and pushed that medication. The patient ended up dying and she lost her license. Another situation was when a patient had a pressure sore and should have been turned every 2 hours. This nurse did not think about all the outcomes associated with pressure sores and did not turn her patient every 2 hours. Within a week, this patients ended up in surgery having a pressure wound that grew into a wound that was so large you had to reach your arm to the wrist into the wound to clean it out. This would never be able to heal because of location and this patient will basically die due to the extent of what happened. (respond for this original post on your own words using 75 or more words, put reference)
